Stan Jastrzebski

News Director

Stan Jastrzebski has spent a career in radio, with postings as News Director of NPR member stations WFSU in Tallahassee, Fla. and WFIU in Bloomington, Ind., and time as a reporter at WGN Radio in Chicago and WIBC Radio in Indianapolis.

Stan holds a master’s degree in broadcast journalism from Northwestern University and has won awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press, Public Radio News Directors Incorporated, the Radio Television Digital News Association and the Indiana Broadcasters Association.

He spends his time away from the newsroom with his wife and daughter and enjoys board games, tennis and trivia competitions.

Ways to Connect

If it seems to you that Tippecanoe County leaders have been talking forever about starting a needle exchange program, that’s just an illusion – it’s only been about eight months since the first approvals began.

But if it has seemed to you that in recent months support for such a program from some local leaders has waned, that may be true.

As he prepares to exit the job he’s held for the last two years, interim National Cancer Institute Director Doug Lowy visited Purdue Thursday as part of a survey of Indiana college research initiatives.

Lowy had spent time earlier in the week visiting Indiana University’s Simon Cancer Center in Indianapolis and giving an update on the first year of former Vice President Joe Biden’s so-called “cancer moonshot” funding – much of which he says is still slated to go to places like Big Ten Universities.

Though Purdue officials have bowed in recent years to faculty criticism that many international students aren’t qualified or prepared to come to school in West Lafayette, a pair of graduates from China have started a company which could help assimilate Asian students.

It’s call We-YouBond, and it hopes to enroll 40-50 Chinese families this fall in a sort of pay-for-friendship model.

Spokesman Noah Scott says incoming Chinese students would be partnered with a current Purdue junior or senior, who’d be their liaison to campus.

Crawfordsville Mayor Todd Barton has made visits this month to businesses granted tax abatements by the city.

It’s normal – required, in many cases – for some sort of check-in to happen, but on this week’s Ask The Mayor, we find out whether Mayor Barton thinks changes that could be afoot in the coming years thanks to Stellar Cities money may change the way the city looks at abatements.

Also on this week’s show, we check back in on the progress of the reconstituted Crawfordsville Human Rights Commission.

This week on WBAA’s Ask The Mayor, we offer some helpful hints to budding entrepreneurs, including this one: If you want a city to give you a tax abatement, there are a few key words you can use to describe that investment you want to make.

IU Health faces a number of challenges as it takes over operation of Frankfort Hospital, and new facility president Kelly Braverman says she’s not sure what she’ll address first – facilities or services.

“Kind of chicken-and-egg, maybe, a little bit," Braverman says. "What I would say is that we are going to do an assessment of the community needs, understand what the volumes are, and what services the community needs. That is the baseline information that you need to figure out what you need the building to be able to provide.”